MINNEAPOLIS

Bachmann formally granted citizenship in Switzerland

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has been granted citizenship in Switzerland.

Bachmann’s spokeswoman Becky Rogness says the congresswoman has been eligible for dual citizenship since she married her husband of Swiss descent in 1978. Rogness tells Minnesota Public Radio that some of the couple’s children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual citizenship, so they went through the process as a family.

Bachmann calls it a “non-story.” In a statement, she says she automatically became a dual citizen of the U.S. and Switzerland in 1978 when she married her husband, Marcus, and that her family just recently updated its documents. She adds that she is “proud to be an American.”

NEW YORK

Warhol’s ‘Double Elvis’ fetches $37 million at auction

Andy Warhol’s “Double Elvis” has sold for $37 million and works by Roy Lichtenstein and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei broke their own records at Sotheby’s contemporary art sale in New York.

Lichtenstein’s “Sleeping Girl,” depicting a woman with closed eyes and flowing blond hair, fetched $44,882,500; Weiwei’s 1-ton, handmade porcelain “Sunflower Seeds” brought $782,500.

Another major work on the auction block Wednesday – Francis Bacon’s “Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror” – sold for $44,882,500. The buyers’ names for each of the four pieces were not released.

The sale came on the heels of art auction history. Last week, the auction house sold Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” for $119.9 million, making it the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

DUBLIN

Courtroom spectator’s chat on phone nets him jail time

Letting your telephone ring in a courtroom is rarely a good idea. Taking the call is worse.

A Northern Ireland man received a brief jail sentence Wednesday after his phone rang, the judge told him to turn it off, but instead he took the call and had a brief chat.

The judge ordered 36-year-old Paddy Sweeney behind bars for two hours, then fined him 200 pounds ($322) for willfully interrupting the court in Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second-largest city. Sweeney had been watching a civil trial at the time.

— From news service reports